In right now’s quickly evolving healthcare panorama, digital transformation is not a luxurious however a necessity. One of the essential elements of this transformation is the digital well being document (EHR) system, which performs a pivotal function in healthcare operations and care supply. Organizations are actively exploring options for his or her conventional on-premises infrastructures to beat important challenges, together with excessive capital expenditure, frequent costly {hardware} refresh cycles, outdated safety protocols, and most significantly, managing the information net of siloed methods. By leveraging linked EHR methods within the cloud, suppliers may unlock the total potential of their knowledge and additional ship data-driven AI improvements.
Azure for mission-critical workloads
Migrating EHR methods to Microsoft Azure gives healthcare organizations with a sturdy platform for mission-critical workloads, guaranteeing optimized efficiency, quick knowledge entry, built-in catastrophe restoration, and enhanced security measures, comparable to AI-powered menace detection and automatic compliance monitoring. On prime of that, Azure maximizes cloud investments, providing new potentialities to harness knowledge to springboard AI improvements.
Information is on the coronary heart of healthcare. Hospitals produce greater than 50 petabytes of information throughout greater than 10 siloed methods yearly. Because the healthcare trade faces the twin challenges of managing huge quantities of unstructured knowledge and a scarcity of workforce, as much as 97% of healthcare knowledge goes unused, highlighting a major missed alternative for operational excellence and higher affected person insights.1 One of many largest advantages for healthcare clients on Azure is the power to unify their multi-modal healthcare knowledge for analytics and AI with healthcare knowledge options in Microsoft Material that lets them ingest, retailer, and analyze knowledge from numerous sources and modalities. Whereas Material unifies your knowledge, Microsoft Purview delivers the information governance service that helps you classify the information throughout your knowledge property, together with identification for delicate knowledge. Integrating Microsoft Purview with healthcare knowledge options in Material not solely strengthens safety but additionally provide help to guarantee compliance, enabling healthcare organizations to manipulate their knowledge with confidence. We’re conscious about the trade expectations through which our expertise is utilized, and this is likely one of the many the explanation why our healthcare clients belief Azure for mission-critical workloads.
As we proceed to ship knowledge improvements, we see our clients use their linked knowledge on a large spectrum of AI capabilities. With Azure AI, healthcare organizations can speed up innovation by means of predictive analytics, automate scientific duties, and enhance affected person interactions with the assistance of ambient AI options like DAX Copilot (straight embedded in EHR methods), in addition to make the most of Microsoft healthcare AI fashions in Azure AI Foundry and GitHub, a group of cutting-edge multi-modal generative AI fashions that profit imaging and radiology workflows.
Enhanced assist for mission-critical
Mission-critical workloads demand complete assist. In 2024, Microsoft Unified enhanced its assist for mission-critical workloads in healthcare by means of its Mission Crucial Choices. This initiative gives proactive assist to enhance the well being, resiliency, and efficiency of healthcare methods through common assessments, steering, and optimization suggestions, guaranteeing enterprise continuity and addressing distinctive healthcare challenges.
Collaborating for expertise excellence: A strategic partnership that stands out
Our dedication to mission-critical is mirrored in our collaborations with main EHR suppliers comparable to Epic®. This long-standing relationship of greater than 20 years has yielded an optimized answer for Epic® on Azure, providing a sturdy, purpose-built platform backed by joint-reference structure. Not too long ago, Microsoft introduced expanded scalability on Azure for healthcare organizations, particularly for operating Epic®’s Chronicles* Operational Database (ODB), rising its capability to 65 million world references per second (GRefs/s), a 171% enhancement from 2023 on the new Mbv3 VM collection.
The collaboration with Epic® extends properly past the cloud infrastructure—to a number of merchandise and capabilities a part of Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare. Epic® and Microsoft have expanded their collaboration to combine superior AI applied sciences comparable to Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service and the DAX Copilot into Epic®’s EHR system. The mixing helps present AI-powered scientific insights, streamline administrative processes, and enhance clinician productiveness by means of options like observe summarization and automatic coding recommendations.
Delivering worth past infrastructure: The Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare promise
Microsoft’s well-rounded partnership with Epic® is likely one of the many the explanation why Azure is the cloud of selection for a lot of of our healthcare clients.
The choice to maneuver mission-critical workloads to the cloud is usually not nearly infrastructure. Clients like Mercy selected Azure to not solely modernize their infrastructure but additionally extract worth from sizeable knowledge archives. Mercy’s digital transformation on Azure enabled it to attach beforehand siloed knowledge and use a number of Microsoft companies comparable to Azure Information Lake to end in constructive enterprise outcomes. For instance, by empowering care groups with good dashboards and insights into elements that decide affected person discharge, Mercy has been capable of scale back affected person keep durations considerably. Mercy employs Azure AI Doc Intelligence to scan and acknowledge data on affected person’s insurance coverage playing cards which then will get up to date on their EHR information robotically.
We acknowledge our buyer’s need to have a whole digital transformation within the cloud that transcends each layer of the stack, and Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare lets us ship to that promise. It encapsulates a broad spectrum of modern knowledge and AI improvements from Microsoft, purpose-built for the healthcare trade, enabling our clients to realize their cloud-first objectives quicker and simpler. Not too long ago, Microsoft introduced a number of improvements as a part of the portfolio, together with new healthcare AI fashions in Azure AI Foundry, capabilities for healthcare knowledge options in Microsoft Material, the healthcare agent service in Copilot Studio, and an AI-powered nursing workflow answer.
As clients understand the worth of consolidating their IT investments round a single vendor, Azure is more and more being adopted for mission-critical workloads. By seamlessly connecting and delivering worth throughout all layers of the stack, Azure for mission-critical extends a buyer’s return on cloud investments. Clients like St. Luke’s College Well being System are reaping the advantages of their Epic® on Azure migration by profiting from a number of synergies within the Microsoft portfolio, just like the interoperability of Microsoft Groups with Epic®. Safety is of paramount significance when coping with affected person information, and clients like Jefferson Well being migrate their Epic® environments to Azure with excessive confidence with Microsoft Defender for end-point detection and response.
Subsequent steps
As we proceed to remodel mission-critical workloads within the cloud, we’re making it simpler for our companions and clients to create linked experiences at each level of care, empower their healthcare workforce, and unlock the worth from their knowledge, all with uncompromised privateness and safety. Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare is supporting healthcare organizations on each step of their journey towards shaping a more healthy future.
*Epic® and Chronicles are logos of Epic Programs Company.
1 World Financial Discussion board, 4 methods knowledge is enhancing healthcare, December 2019.
